** HR Change Management
As a manager, how do you encourage and motivate remote workers?
van Orsouw16-06-2021 1:57 PM
As a manager, are you now managing your home-based team remotely? Then the question has probably arisen in your mind as to how you fulfill your role as manager in this context and best keep in touch with your employees. How do you increase motivation, for example? How do you promote cooperation? And how do you deal with difficult situations?
Create safety and trust
You can start monitoring your employees, asking them about their work and having them dial in at mandatory times. But that doesn't exactly increase trust and motivation. Moreover, some people are in difficult circumstances, for example with young children or needy family.
Accept that the days will be different than usual and give your team freedom and confidence. Ask about what people are struggling with, listen carefully and think about solutions. Be transparent in what happens in the organization and how you experience it. People need clarity and something to hold on to.
Let people make comparisons within themselves
It is in our nature to compare ourselves with others. For example, we are strongly inclined to look at how long someone else took to do something or in what way. As a manager it is important not to go along with...
How to behave as a leader, manager, and coach, which role do you fulfill when?
van Orsouw15-06-2021 3:30 PM
As a manager you fulfill three different roles: that of leader, manager, and coach.
A leader has a vision. A manager converts that vision into practical goals. And a coach helps employees develop to their full potential. It makes sense to regularly think about which role you want to use to achieve your goal. Below you can read what the roles entail and which reflexes and pitfalls you can avoid.
The role of the leader
As a leader you inspire people with your story. You carry out the mission, vision and strategy. You know the values of your organisation and put them into practice. You also enthuse and connect employees with this. storytelling can help you get your message across more effectively. A story is good if it is passed on.
If you want to take people with you, it is important that you make them share in what you want to achieve with the organisation or department. Make sure the subject is regularly on the agenda and check what your employees think the goal is, for example by paying attention to it during team days.
Pitfalls
- You do not take enough time for the strategy, you do not believe in the current strategy, or...
Never Waste a Good Crisis
van Orsouw17-06-2020 6:16 PM
Reading time : 5 mins
Now it is time for all of us who navigated this pandemic safely, to face new challenges that awaits us. COVID19 changed all our lives in ways than we can imagine. I began this year in HR by focusing on building critical skills and competencies to meet the digital disruption that was widespread. However, COVID-19 drove an unprecedented transformation in business and ways of working in a very short period of time. The way we lead people, the way we manage our workforce and the tools have to be changed now. In this brief post, I try to share some areas of major change and some key actions that can help this journey for you.
Being a business leader or an HR person during these times is not for the light hearted and require out of the box thinking, resilience and leadership. Your business might have survived the last few months, but if you want to build it from here, it will require some well thought through, concrete actions.
What is happening around us?
It’s important to understand the large shift that's happening in consumer behavior and how business is done. Understand how your customer...
Adaptability vs Vision in Leaders
van Orsouw03-04-2018 10:34 AM
Adaptability vs Vision in Leaders
Change is an ever present feature of today’s world. This is especially true in the world of business. The complexity of doing business can give rise to a tension between a company’s vision, and the organizational adaptability that the firm needs to adopt in order to maintain that vision. With the pace of change increasing, a variety of leadership skills are urgently needed, as well as a strategy to determine which skill to use for a given challenge.
In 2010, IBM’s CEO study reported that the rising rate of complexity associated with the fast paced nature of technological innovation and connectedness, and the uncertainty associated with both, was the biggest challenge facing organizational leaders around the world. Among the many factors analysed in the study, creativity was selected as the main one to allow organizations to successfully navigate the complexity of the modern world. As physicist Amory Lovins commented, “We’ve got 21st century technology and speed colliding head-on with 20th and 19th century institutions, rules and cultures.” Such a situation necessitates adaptability and change.
This is not to say that adaptability is the sole factor in successful leadership for the 21st century. Jeff Childs, Chief Human...
How to Engage Middle-Management During Corporate Change
Together Abroad06-03-2018 9:03 PM
There are few things in life more certain than this: Change is inevitable. At some point, we all have to face transformations in our lives, our circumstances, or at work. We can even say, from a bigger perspective, that change is always present. The gentle old man that brings our newspaper does not come anymore, the trees from the street are cut out modifying the landscape, or our aunt unexpectedly dies. In any given situation, change can bring about uncertainty and concern, but can also be an opportunity to grow.
Business organizations experience change all the time, especially during financial crises or global instability, when companies need to adjust to new conditions. These may be unsettling times for employees because they do not know what to expect. Mergers, acquisitions, restructures, or strategy transformations can produce anxiety and fear, undermining confidence in long-term perspectives. So, how can an organization successfully navigate through these challenging, stormy waters?
Engagement is the answer. Employee engagement determines high performance and creates value for any organization. It involves the emotional (focus, motivation, passion) and behavioral (strive to give an extra effort) reaction to a given work environment. And it is this quality that is most at...
Do Bonuses Improve Employee Performance
Together Abroad02-10-2017 12:05 PM
Methods that can successfully motivate employees to increase productivity and the quality of work are not always easy to come by. One method used by organisations is bonuses, which are awarded to highly achieving employees in the hopes that they will continue to produce well, or even improve further. Within the last few years, more organisations have begun relying on incentive pay to increase employee performance. What is more, some organisations implement full performance management systems. These systems help to determine just how big a bonus should be for high achieving employees, and they are usually used for continuous bonus compensation, rather than just one-off rewards. Other organisations implement year-end bonuses or profit-sharing bonuses as an incentive. No matter the bonus, the type, its size or what form it takes; bonuses can both positively and negatively affect employees and their performance.
What Bonuses Really Do to Employee Performance
The general misconception about bonuses is that they will always effectively increase employee motivation, thus enabling high performance. A study conducted by Willis Towers Watson found that only 50% of the studied senior managers considered bonuses to be an effective incentive for improving employee performance. It seems that the main problem is...
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Mr. C. Joubert
Lead Workplace Strategy Consultant
Mr. C. Joubert
Lead Workplace Strategy Consultant